The Brown Daily Herald T hursday, N ovember 6, 2008
Volume CXLIII, No. 107
Since 1866, Daily Since 1891
Volunteers now flush with free time
Much work ahead, say race scholars
By Jenna Stark Senior Staff Writer
By Debbie Lehmann Staff Writer
After late nights and long days spent talking to strangers to support her yearlong addiction, Ariel Werner ’09 has finally entered “detox” — election detox, that is. As the votes were tallied Tuesday and President-elect Barack Obama spoke to thousands at Chicago’s Grant Park, some Brown students waved
a neighborhood south of Greensboro. “New Hampshire seemed pretty locked up, while North Carolina was one of the neglected states,” Werner said. “So we decided to come down here and help.” A Brown alum who is the deputy field organizer for the region was able to “plug (Werner) into a position of responsibility,” she said, adding that her previous experience as the student coordinator of the Rhode Island Right to Vote Campaign helped her acquire her job. “I hold down the fort at one of the campaign offices,” Werner said. “We have a number of volunteers from Greensboro, High Point and out of town. I’m basically managing these
For Professor of Africana Studies Tricia Rose PhD’93, Barack Obama’s election Tuesday as the nation’s first black president is just the beginning of a larger story. “That curtain went down, but now the curtain has to go back up,” Rose said Wednesday. “And what will happen in the second act? That’s not a given.” For Rose and other Brown professors who study racial inequality, policy and politics, Obama’s victory was not just historic but also steeped in significance. His election is “momentous” and “remarkable,” they said — “a turning point.” But Tuesday’s vote by no means represents an end to racial inequality in America, they stressed. Professor of Economics Glenn Loury, a prominent scholar on racial inequality and social policy, said he was struck and inspired by Obama’s success. Lour y was skeptical when Obama’s campaign first launched, he said. In remarks aired last night on the BBC, he explained it had not seemed possible that “the deep structure of American power would permit the ascent of this son of Africa to its pinnacle.” In that sense, the election re-
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FEATURE goodbye to the grueling months of electoral campaigning. Student campaigners like Werner said they plan to unwind after intensive campaigning by returning to their previous activities, while still remaining involved in political issues. A political science concentrator, Werner said her decision to volunteer for the Obama campaign was a “natural extension” of her normal activities. “In 2005, when I first got to Brown, I worked on the local Rhode Island elections,” she said. Werner began campaigning for Obama at the end of August of last year. She first worked in New Hampshire, campaigning there on weekends and even spending a week canvassing in January before the primaries. But Werner said it was difficult to balance her political life and her normal activities. “The detox will mostly be going back to school, work, my thesis — all the things I’ve had a very difficult time concentrating on while
Isabel Gottlieb / Herald
Brown students canvassing for Democrats in New Hampshire in the weekend leading up to Election Day. working on the campaign,” she said. “I might start working on the local elections.” Ellis Rochelson ’09, a Herald sports columnist, was also busy campaigning for Obama for much of the past year, canvassing in New Hampshire as of last November and making calls to Ohio during the last few weeks before the presidential election as part of the get-out-the-vote campaign. Rochelson, a theatre arts concentrator and pre-med student, said he felt “spread thin” trying to keep up with his academics and extracurricular activities, such as his improvisation and a cappella groups, while campaigning. “It will be good after the campaign to see my friends a little more who haven’t been involved in the campaign and be able to focus on my extracur-
Programmers could beat the preregistration system By Melissa Shube Senior Staf f Writer
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Did you wake up early to register for classes? It may not be necessary if you’ve got some programming skills. Two years after the implementation of Banner, the University has found a new threat to the system — a few students are writing programs to automatically register for classes with limited enrollment. In an e-mail sent to the student body, Associate Registrar Lisa Mather reminded students that the use of automated registration systems is considered a violation of University policy. Seniors began pre-registering Tuesday, and juniors star ted Wednesday. Sophomores start today. Registrar Michael Pesta said his office first noticed this issue last year when two students attempted to make changes to their registration — which include adding or dropping courses and changing
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grade options — and exceeded Banner’s limit on the number of times students can submit changes. Pesta said the limit is over 1,000. “Instead of manually clicking ‘submit changes’ several times in a row to try to get into a course, the students in question created a program to do this automatically,” Mather wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. Both students came separately into the Office of the Registrar to complain that they were unable to register online. For the second incident, the Registrar asked Computing and Information Services to look at the logs for the student’s Banner activity, and found that the number of changes attributed to the student’s ID would be nearly impossible to do without a computer’s assistance. The student denied the charge. Pesta said these programs, which could run for days if a spot does not
Postkicks it with some real voters and ponders presidential palates
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ricular improv group that I care a lot about,” said Rochelson, a member of long-form improvisational comedy troupe Starla and Sons. Still, Rochelson was quick to add that he has enjoyed being a part of the Obama campaign. “It’s stressful and I want to tear my hair out at every poll I see, but it’s exciting and fun,” he said. Rochelson said he plans to stay involved in the political process even after the elections are over. “I want to find more local initiatives,” he said, adding that the presidential contest may feel like “American Idol,” but that there are other, smaller ways to “make a difference.” Last Friday, Werner drove to Greensboro, N.C., in order to campaign through Election Day. She ran a staging location in High Point, N.C.,
Experts discuss Asia, an Obama presidency By Lauren Fedor Contributing Writer
On the day after a historic presidential election, more than 50 students gathered in the Sidney Frank Hall for Life Sciences to hear two leading foreign policy experts discuss the challenges President-elect Barack Obama will face in the months and years ahead. In a lecture entitled “The Next American Foreign Policy,” Douglas Paal ’69 of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Jonathan Pollack of the Naval War College discussed the United States’ past, present and future roles in global affairs. As part of the Strait Talk Symposium — an ongoing, weeklong dialogue about the relationships among the United States, China and Taiwan — the two panelists placed particular
Strait talk about asia Douglas Paal and Jonathan Pollack discuss issues in Asia that Obama will have to tackle
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Min Wu / Herald
Douglas Paal and Jonathan Pollack spoke about the future of U.S.-East Asian relations.
emphasis on the United States’ interactions with East Asia. Paal, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the former director of the American Institute in Taiwan, stressed the importance of viewing the United States’ current East Asian interactions within a historical context. For more than half an hour, he provided an overview of the last three decades of the United States’ involvement with Taiwan. Tracing American foreign
election day benefits Adam Cambier ’09 is glad that the elections have given Tina Fey the credit she deserves
195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island
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policy from the Nixon era to today, Paal spoke of the “lasting impact” of various White House administrations. He said that while Obama will face “policy challenges,” he will most likely follow President Bush’s agenda in Taiwan. “President Bush has not done a bad job in Asia,” said Paal, who also served as a special assistant to President George H.W. Bush. Obama inherits a “promising outcontinued on page 5
fencers skewer a win The fencing team performs well at the first tournament of the season at Smith
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